Lowering the Bar: Beer Week Edition

Each week, we bring you our top picks for the best places to drink on the cheap in San Francisco. With SF Beer Week starting Friday, we thought we'd feature some of the great deals being offered on craft brews around town this week.

1. Alembic’s Beer Week Happy Hour: Beer Week gets some people in the mood to celebrate. Alembic is making a bid to be the last destination of the night for attendees of the festival: every night of Beer Week, from 11 pm on, they’ll have $4 draft beers and half-price bar snacks. It’s a pretty cheap way to enjoy a pretty nice bar—especially once the weekend rolls around. (Friday, February 5 – Sunday, February 14 at Alembic, 1725 Haight St., Upper Haight.)

2. Can-A-Palooza: Who says quality craft beer can’t come in a can? Not the folks at 21st Amendment, who’ve long sold their beers at retail encased in aluminum, not glass. To celebrate their iconoclasm, the brewery/restaurant will offer $2 cans of their beers and those of other breweries (including Oskar Blues, the fabulous can-only Colorado brewery). After this event, you’ll find it hard to kick the can. (Monday, February 8, 5-10 pm, at 21st Amendment, 563 2nd St., SOMA.)

3. Happy Hour in Coney Island: Schmaltz Brewing Company, the makers of He’brew, now produce a line of sideshow-themed lagers. To promote their new Human Blockhead brew, they’ll be offering $3 pints of it at Bender’s, with the kitchen serving up Coney-style hot dogs. Go ahead, freak out. (Wednesday, February 10, 6-9 pm, at Bender’s, 806 South Van Ness Ave., Mission.)

4. Beer-In: Making a very correct assumption that the 70’s sketch show “Laugh-In” would have been improved by getting its audience drunk, Cobb’s Comedy Club is hosting a beer-centric variety show, featuring music, comedy, and of course, craft brews. Your $10 admission buys access to the show, plus 3 tokens redeemable for full-size beers. If buying the world a Coke teaches it to sing, imagine what might happen when you buy it a Lagunitas IPA. (Wednesday, February 10, 7-11 pm, at Cobb’s Comedy Club, 915 Columbus Ave., North Beach.)

5. Sudwerk Beer Tasting: Sudwerk’s head brewer, Ryan Fry, sure seems like a mensch: he’s offering free tastings of his full line at the Republic, with pints of Sudwerk’s pilsner half-price all night long. He’ll be in person at the event, so go ahead and thank him while you’re there. (Thursday, February 11, tasting 5-9 pm, half-price pints all night, at The Republic, 3213 Scott St., Marina.)